When Beach Boys frontman Mike Love asked if they should sing some things off Pet Sounds, the groups most innovative album from 1966, and was met with barely a murmur of approval from the large audience you had confirmed that this crowd was there for the innocent escapistCalifornia pop of the early 60s.
And in that Love - the sole founding member - and these Beach Boys obliged. This was a night of surf songs, car songs and dance songs (Do You Wanna Dance and Dance, Dance Dance), covers like Why Do Fools Fall in Love and California Dreamin', and plenty of Beach Boys classics including California Girls, Little Honda, Do It Again, I Get Around ... However with so many of the vocal parts being taken by the much younger band (although longtime member Bruce Johnston on keyboards did his share at times) it raised questions about these Beach Boys.
Love - at 66 looking very stiff and reduced to flickering hand gestures - took his part more than adequately in some places. But when the drummer, bassist or the guitarists sing lead vocals and most of those harmony parts are we seeing the Beach Boys, or a Beach Boys covers band which just happens to includes a couple of longtime members playing much diminished roles?
When opening act Christopher Cross - whose pleasantly unmemorable and homogeneous music was why radio stations with names like Cool FM seem to have been invented - joins them to play/sing the part of the late BB Carl Wilson is that still the Beach Boys?
But people stood up and danced sometimes, clapped, sang along to the old hits, waved their cellphones during Surfer Girl, and I have no doubt went home very happy. And to be fair these Beach Boys did also sing nice versions of In My Room, Warmth of the Sun, and God Only Knows. It's always good to hear those ones.
So sometimes, to flip that old Rolling Stones title, maybe it is the song - not the singer?
